Let Them Eat Tanks, and an update on Mazin Qumsiyeh’s detention in Israel

The June issue of Sojourners has a cover story about the Pentagon budget titled “Let Them Eat Tanks: How the Pentagon’s binge spending is starving the rest of us.” It’s an interview, with some good charts on military spending, between Sojourners founder Jim Wallis and Ben Cohen, of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream fame. Ben has long campaigned for cutting military spending through his Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities. (To read the article online you need to sign up for Sojourners email action alerts, which are very good.)

You may have heard about the deaths and arrests over the weekend relating to protests around the anniversary of what Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe, dating to the founding of Israel. Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian-American peace activist and advocate of nonviolence, and a former Peace Action Education Fund board member, was detained by Israeli authorities. Here is an update on his status, as well as videos from the region:

PNN journalist Ghassan Bannoureh took the following video which documented